John Otho Marsh Jr.

John Otho Marsh Jr. (7 August 1926-4 February 2019) was a member of the US House of Representatives (D-VA 7) from 3 January 1963 to 3 January 1971 (succeeding Burr Harrison and preceding J. Kenneth Robinson), Counselor to the President from 9 August 1974 to 20 January 1977, and US Secretary of the Army from 30 January 1981 to 14 August 1989 (succeeding Percy A. Pierre and preceding Michael P.W. Stone).

Biography
John Otho Marsh Jr. was born in Winchester, Virginia in 1926, and he served in the US Army in Allied-occupied Germany and in the Vietnam War, retiring in 1971 with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. From 1954 to 1962, he served as the town attorney in New Market, and he served in the US House of Representatives from 1963 to 1971; he served a month in Vietnam without telling his fellow soldiers he was a congressman. He went on to serve as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs from 1973 to 1974 and Counselor to the President from 1974 to 1977, serving under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. During the 1980s, he became a Republican and went on to serve as Secretary of the Army under Ronald Reagan, supporting a budget increase of 30%, the enhancement of special forces, and the deployment of the Pershing II missile system to West Germany. He left office in 1989 as the longest-serving Army Secretary, going on to serve as Chairman of the Reserve Forces Policy Board from 1989 to 1994 and as CEO of the Novavax Inc. pharmaceutical company. He died in Raphine, Virginia in 2019 at the age of 92.